Wednesday, May 31, 2006

India leads world in number of AIDS cases

SourceThe data released by UNAIDS shows that India now has the largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS. With an estimated 5.7 million infections, it has surpassed South Africa's 5.5 million.

But the epidemic still remains at its worst in sub-Saharan Africa, where per capita rates continue to climb in several countries. A third of adults were infected in Swaziland in 2005. By comparison, India's per capita rate is low, at 0.9 percent of its 1.02 billion people.

Here is the complete UNAIDS report.In this report, China, the most populous country in the world, has about 650,000 HIV infections.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

India witnesses over $1.2 b foreign funds outflow

Any bubble in India stock market? What's risks for Indian economy? 1. High budget deficit. It is almost 80% of its GDP and still growing fast.2. High trade deficit. Almost $40 billion in 2005. It is huge comaring with about $100 billion export.3. High oil price4. Inequal development.5. Highly depends on FII for investment.6. Overvalued currency.

Mumbai: India and Korea bore the major brunt of the recent sell-off by foreign funds in emerging markets. It is estimated that foreign funds pulled out about $5 billion last week from emerging markets with India alone witnessing an outflow of over $1.2 billion.

According to data filed with the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the total sell-off by foreign funds in the last eight trading sessions accounted for $2.5 billion (Rs 11,131 crore).

Friday, May 26, 2006

China Losing Ground In Sci-Fi

China is not making progress in any fields and the market economy is apparantly not a panacea. Sometimes, the market economy hurts.

Science fiction is important for kids' development and also important in economy since they can influence generations by generations. China is losing ground in Sci-fi industry after the reform. (Source)

In 1980s, China published over 30 kinds of sci-fi magazines and newspapers, with hundreds of original sci-fi and popular science articles.

But today, "SF World," with a circulation of 500,000, is the only surviving sci-fi magazine in the country. Each Chinese sci-fi work may only have 20,000 copies printed.

India's Insecurity Feeling Hurts China-India Business

China and India are two neighbors. The relwtionship between them are improving in recently years, and the two sides vow to enhance the trade and business relationships. But it seems that India government has very strong insecurity sense against China. Is that caused by the war in 1962 in which India was defeated?

Here are some examples:

1. Shenzen Cimac-Tianda Airport Support Ltd's bid for supplying aerobridges for Indian airports was turned down by the Airports Authority of India on security grounds. Even the company's bid was the lowest at Rs 79.10 crore, leaving a single bidder, Spain's ThyssenKrupp, that quoted Rs 189 crore for the same job. (Source). Actually Cimac-Tianda's products have been using in other Indian airports.

2. In 2005, for the second time in the last five years, Indian security agencies have moved to slow Huawei's expansion plans out of concern for India’s strategic telecom network. In 2001, U.S. intelligence sources reportedly tipped off the Indian government about Huawei’s activities here. (Source).

3. In 2006, India will not allow equipment maker Huawei to bid for BSNL's GSM project due to security reasons. (Source). Huawei's products are sold well in Asian, African, European and American countries.

4. India’s Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) has referred the question of giving security clearance to Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH)’s bid for the Mumbai offshore container terminal to the country’s security advisor M K Narayanan. (Source). HPH is a world top port operator based in Hongkong and has business in all over the world.

Indian government's insecurity sense reaches a ridiculous point. It does not only hurt business of Chinese companies, it also hurt India own business operations.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Foreign telecom operator joins TD-SCDMA

China has made quick progress in the telecommunicton industry. TD-SCDMA 3G standard is another example.

Participating in the founding of industrial standard is a contribution to the world's innovation and can also enhance the domestic development. This is very important for China that has very large manufacturin bases and needs urgently to promote her industrial level for further economic development. It's nice to know that Chinese government and companies understand this importance.

As said in the news, TD-SCDMA is in the last testing before its commercialization. The development of TD-SCDMA system is a test for China's electronical industry, IC design and manufacturing industry and IT industry. No matter if it will success in market, it does promote China's research, bolsters China's experience. (Source)

France Telecom Beijing R&D Co., Ltd. recently joined the TD-SCDMA Forum to become the first foreign telecom in the China-developed 3G standard camp, said sources with the Forum in Beijing Thursday.

Analysts said the move by France telecom, the second largest mobile operator in Europe, indicates that overseas operators have begun to keep a close eye on TD-SCDMA, a new third generation (3G) mobile communication technology developed by Chinese companies.

Along with France Telecom, Agilent Technologies, FiberHome Technologies and Infineo also became new members of the forum.

The new members will help improve TD-SCDMA technology, push forward its commercialization and promote international cooperation on the technology, said Wang Jing, secretary general of the Forum.

In competition with two other international standards -- WCDMA and CDMA2000 -- the technology has experienced hard times since the day it was born.

"TD-SCDMA was almost unknown to the overseas telecom companies. When they talked of 3G they meant WCDMA in Europe and CDMA2000 in America," said Wang.

As the technology matured and the Chinese government gave both funding and preferential policies, TD-SCDMA became well known among foreign companies.

"They began to seek more information about TD-SCDMA, which will help them to make policies on future development," said Wang.

No company can risk ignoring the world's largest mobile market where TD-SCDMA will definitely have an important seat, he said.

TD-SCDMA is in its final testing stage before commercial use. As the government develops its policy on 3G licensing and more companies show their support for TD-SCDMA, industry insiders are more optimistic about the China-developed 3G technology.

As an important organization pushing forward internationalization of the 3G technology, the TD-SCDMA Forum has over 430 members, including operators, system providers, content providers, financial institutions and research academies.

Chinese and Indians Are Travelling

With the economical development, a lot of Chinese has extra money to spend on travelling. More and more Chinese can afford international trip (source):

As usual when something goes over big in China, the numbers are staggering. In 1995, only 4.5 million Chinese traveled overseas. By 2005 that figure had increased to 31 million, and if expectations for future growth are met or approached, even that gargantuan growth will be quickly dwarfed. Chinese and international travel industry experts forecast that at least 50 million Chinese tourists will travel overseas annually by 2010, and 100 million by 2020.

With the infrastructure impeovement and the briliant cultrure, more and more people from the outside visit China too. China received 47.11 million visitors in 2005 only. (Source) This number should not include the vistors from Hongkong, Macau and Taiwan.

The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) has predicted that over the next decade China will become the second largest travel and tourism market in the world, after the United States. China received 120 million foreign tourists last year. This number should cover the Chinese visitors from Hongking, Macau and Taiwan. China's travel and tourism industry is expected to account for 2.3 per cent of total employment in 2006. The industry provides 17,383,000 jobs. The overall tourism income reached 768 billion yuan (96 billion US dollars). (Source).

India's tourism industry is growing too. India received 3.46 million and 3.92 million people in 2004 and 2005 respectively. (Source). There would be 6.9 million outbound tourists from India by 2006 with the growth set to expand at 5.7 percent annually. (Source)

Pictures of Some medium or Small Cities In China

Many people are familiar with the pictures or the development in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen or some other large cities in China.

The following pictures show the development in the small or medium cities in China from north to south,from east to west.

By Chinese standard, the cities of population of less than 100,000 are called towns. The cities of population between 100,000 to 400,000 are called small cities. The cities of population between 400,000 to 1 million are called medium cities. The large cities must have population of more than 1 million.

In 2004, China’s service exports were US$62 billion versus US$40 billion for India. On the other hand, 60% ofChina’s service exports were travel and transportation services while in India the figure was 22%.

Budget deficit: 10% of GDP in India versus 2% in China

In the period 1993-2001, 53% of adult Chinese worked while only 37.7% of Indians worked. This was largely due to the lower female participation in India, itself the result of cultural factors.

In 2002 China spent US$128 billion on power and transport infrastructure compared to US$18 billion for India.

China’s highway network amounts to 1.4 million kilometers compared to 200,000 kilometers for India. Finally, due to insufficient port capacity, the lead time for Indian exports to the US is roughly three to four times greater than Chinese exports.

India’s average tariff fell from 56% in 1990 to 28% in 2004. By comparison, China’s average tariff dropped from 32% to 6% over the same period.

In 2003, India’s exports of commercial services other than travel, transportation, and finance amounted to US$18.9 billion. The figure for China was US$20.6 billion. In other words, China may already be ahead of India in selling IT services to the world.

Roughly 15% of China’s population aged 18 to 23 is enrolled in higher education compared to 7% in India. 91% of Chinese adults are literate versus 61% in India. Among females, the numbers are 87% and 45% respectively. In China, there are 18 pupils per teacher in secondary schoolsversus 34 in India. Clearly, China has an advantage when it comes to education.

China spends more money on research and development, has greater ubiquity of computers and internet users, and publishes more articles in scientific and technical journals.

In 2002 the typical monthly wage of a manufacturing worker in India was US$23.80 while in China the figure was US$110.80, according to the IMF.

India far behind in reducing malnutrition: World Bank

Even India has made progress in the economy, but most of Indians are not the beneficiaries of the achivement. From the report, almost three-quarters of Indian children under three years were below the normal weight for their age with 47 per cent underweight or severely underweight and another 26 per cent mildly underweight, (Source) In China only 8% of Chinese kids have problem of malnutrition accoding to the same report. That's a huge difference. (Source)

New Delhi, May 11, 2006

With about 60 million underweight children, India lagged far behind other countries with similar economic growth in reducing malnutrition, a World Bank report has said. The report, 'India's Undernourished Children: A Call For Reform and Action' suggested that the Integrated Child Development Services Programme, an initiative in existence for the past three decades, address the problem of child malnutrition in the country and undergo significant changes.

The prevalence of underweight children in India is among the highest in the world and is nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa, the report said, adding that economic growth alone was unlikely to be sufficient to significantly lower the prevalence of malnutrition and meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving the prevalence of underweight children between 1990 and 2015.

Stating that approximately 60 million children were underweight in India, the report said that reductions in the prevalence of malnutrition over the last decade had been small - the prevalence of underweight children has only fallen from 53 per cent to 47 per cent between 1992-93 and 1998-99.

"In comparison, even Bangladesh scores higher in terms of reducing malnutrition, while China has made steep decline in malnutrition," Michele Gragnolati, senior economist and lead author of the report, said.

In 1998-99, almost three-quarters of Indian children under three years were below the normal weight for their age with 47 per cent underweight or severely underweight and another 26 per cent mildly underweight, the report said.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

China versus India

This is an article by Arthur Kroeber, the Managing editor of China Economic Quarterly.(Source)

There is a growing sentiment among investors that India will be “the next China” – a huge, fast growing developing country whose plentiful cheap labour force will drive down the price down of manufactured goods and whose demand for construction materials will drive up the prices of commodities. It is also increasingly popular to argue that India will do better than China in the coming years, because its democratic system and rule of law are more conducive to the development of globally competitive private companies.

It’s a pretty story, and it has elements of truth. But here are two big reasons why it is off-target.

1. Economic growth stems from high savings, not from political systems.

The fashionable argument used to be that China grew at a fast 9-10 per cent a year because its authoritarian political system could ram through unpopular reforms and commandeer national savings at low interest rates to build infrastructure. India grew more slowly, at 5-6 per cent a year, because its democratic system throttled both reform and infrastructure.

This theory is beginning to look dodgy now that India is heading toward a structural growth rate of 8 per cent. In fact, there is little evidence that political systems ever had anything to do with the China-India divergence. The differential growth rates are explained first by China’s higher savings rate, which is around 40 per cent of gross domestic product versus 20 per cent in India. The savings rate is in turn a function of two things: agricultural productivity, which has consistently been about twice as high in China as in India since the 1970s, and demographics. A population dominated by a young workforce generates high savings; the savings rate falls as the population ages.

In agriculture, India still lags China dramatically, because in most places land tenure has not been reformed and the majority of farmers are tenants or indentured labourers. The backward agricultural sector will be a drag on growth for years to come. Demographics, however, favour India. Beginning in the next decade China’s population will begin to age rapidly and the savings rate will fall. India, however, is just entering an era of “demographic dividend”, driven by a young workforce that will probably last for about three decades.

Another factor behind the divergence is that China is fundamentally egalitarian and India is fundamentally elitist. China’s leaders, though repressive, have pursued broad-based growth in large part because their legitimacy rested on little else. India’s leaders have largely represented the interests of the highest castes in a very stratified society. Growth has not been as important as preserving the elite’s privileges.

2. Rule of law is not that important for early-stage economic growth.

It is true that India has done better than China at creating private firms with real international competitiveness: think of Infosys or the Tata Group conglomerate, which have no Chinese counterparts. But this is only marginally the result of India’s superior legal and financial market framework – and more important, is irrelevant for growth.

India’s internationally competitive firms are mainly the reflection of a horrendously difficult domestic investment environment. Companies that have survived this harsh climate could only do so by being ferociously efficient users of capital. As India’s investment environment improves, however, capital will become more abundant and, rates of return will fall. In other words, to sustain higher rates of economic growth, India must paradoxically become a less efficient user of capital.

In China, it is certainly true that a poor legal and capital-markets environment will discourage the development of knowledge-based firms. And foreign financial investors will find it difficult to generate consistent returns from Chinese equities. But this is irrelevant to economic growth, which is predicated on China’s gigantic comparative advantage in high-volume, low-margin manufacturing.

Moreover, it is an often overlooked fact that China’s rampant disregard for intellectual property laws has been very important in laying the foundations for broad-based consumer growth in the future. China has had a more or less explicit policy of stealing foreign technology and then producing it on a vast scale at very low cost. This enables domestic consumers to enjoy a far higher level of consumption of things like refrigerators, cell phones, and personal computers than their incomes would have implied in earlier eras.

In sum, there can be no question that India’s structural growth rate is rising to the 8-9 per cent range, while China’s will likely fall to under 8 per cent sometime in the next decade. Financial investors will tend to find Indian equities more rewarding than Chinese.

But because of low agricultural productivity and a stratified society that produces an elitist policy bias, India is unlikely to replicate the turbo-charged economic growth of China, which saw peaks of around 15 per cent in 1993 and around 13 per cent in 2003. And China’s far more equal urban income distribution (only 3 per cent of urban households earn less than US$1000 per year, compared with 53 per cent in India) means that India will continue to lag in broad-based domestic consumption.

Moreover, India has the disadvantage of entering its high-growth phase at the moment when world commodity prices have been driven to historic highs by China, whereas China enjoyed two decades of fast growth in a era of low commodity prices. India may be a more efficient user of resources, but the prices of its inputs are set by China. India has a bright future, but it looks a lot different than China’s.

The China Economic Quarterly is an independent newsletter devoted to analysis of the Chinese economy and business environment since 1997. It draws on the 25 years of combined experience of its editors, veteran financial journalists Joe Studwell and Arthur Kroeber, and also publishes articles by leading China-focused economists and journalists. This column appears exclusively on FT.com on alternate Mondays.

Iraq, A People's War

What is the People"s War? According to the wikipedia it is a military-political strategy invented by Chairman Mao Zedong.

In its original formulation by Chairman Mao, people's war exploits the few advantages that a small revolutionary movement has-- broad-based popular support can be one of them-- against a state's power with a large and well-equipped army. People's war strategically avoids decisive battles, since a tiny force of a few dozen soldiers would easily be routed in an all-out confrontation with the state. Instead, it favours the strategy of protracted warfare, with carefully chosen battles that can realistically be won. As it grows in power, it establishes other revolutionary base areas and spreads its influence through the surrounding countryside, where it may become the governing power and gain popular support through some programmes.

Generally speaking, people's war has some characterristics:1. It's the war between two sides, one side is very strong and another side is very weak.2. The weak side can always get strong support from local residents (people) for political, economical, religious or any other reasons. On the contratry, the other side is more powerful, but cannot get support from local people.3. The weak side has a central command center that defines the strategies and principle tasks. But all of its groups fight independently, flexibly, but in serving those strategies and tasks directly or indirectly.4. The weak side fight by small units. They avoid the main or decisive battles. The aim of each battle is small, such as small casualties of enemy, some logistic supply, etc. But the accumulated harm on enemy could be huge in long run.5. The the stronger side in aggression, the weak side retreat to other places since they can still get support from local people or hide themselves among those people.6. The weak side becomes stronger and stronger and will win the war in the end.

Basically, people's war does not mean the fighting by massive people. It actually means the strong and decisive support from people.

In the world war II, China's KMT party fought in the frontline against Japanese troops, while the Red Army led by Communist Party fought in the areas KMT army lost and then occupied by Japanese. In 8 years, the Red Army had 125,000 battles against Japanese, killed or wounded 520,000 Japanese soldiers. The area controlled by Red Army expanded to 1 million square killometers (around 1/10 th of all China)with more than 100 million population (around 1/4 the of all China's population). The Red Army itself expanded to more than 1 million. (Source)

Lets back to Iraq. Even US said it invaded Iraq for kicking out Saddam regime. For the Iraq people that's a occupation by the force of outsiders who has different religion. No matter what, American invasion is not welcomed by Iraq majority.

It is now clear to everyone - apart from Donald Rumsfeld and his cronies - that, far from being a rump of Saddamist malcontents, the resistance enjoys broad based support among the Sunnis and increasingly the Shias too. The old truths are alive and well. People do not want to be ruled by an alien power from thousands of miles away whose interests are self-serving. The resistance in Iraq bears all the hallmarks of a people's war for self-determination.

(source)That's why US is till fighting Iraq rebellions after 3 years at cost of almost 2,500 American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi lives. (Source) In fact, there is a people's war in Iraq now.

History is a mirror for today. It would be very difficult for US to win the war if US continues its todays middle east and Iraqi policies. The most important thing US should do is winning support from Iraqi people and Muslim communities. US should call its troops back if it cannot get that precious support.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

100,000 S Koreans In Beijing Alone

There are two big S Korean communities in Beijing. One is in Wangjing area, a big residential area and a satellite city of Beijing, another one is in Haidian District.

There are about 60,000 S Koreans in Wangjing.

S Krean Kids Are Playing in Wangjing Residential Area (Left).

The immigration of S Koreans started in 1992 when China and S Korea kicked off their deplomatic relationship. At very beginning, S Koreans thought China should be a horrible, poor place since the impact of the S Korea propaganda. They were even terrified when they saw Chinese national flags in the first time.

In the Asian Crisis in 1997, S Korea's economy was in trouble but China kept the stable. S Koreans begun to feel China's charm.

Both Chinese and S Koreans share the same culture. It's not difficult for S Koreans to adapt to China. Stable and strong economical growth, a lot of opportunities, affordable living lure more and more S Koreans to Beijing.

A S Korean Church Event in Wangjing to Show the Respect to Old Persons.

Among the S Koreans in Beijing, about 20,000 are international students, 20,000 have their own business in Beijing and about 10,000 are sent by S Korean companies. Others are the kids or relatives of those people.

It is also reported that there are another 100,000 S Koreans in Qingdao, another large city in Shandong province too.

Will Indian SEZs Succeed?

In late 1970s and early 1980s, China set up 14 special economical zones (SEZ) to test the market economy before pushing the reform nationwide. The experiment is proven to be a huge success. For example, Shenzhen was only a fishing village of about 3,000 residents. Today, Shenzhen become a modern, vigorous (See the picture) metropolitan covering an area of 2,020 square kilometres (780 square miles) with 13 million residents within 25 years. (Source)

Why China succeeded in SEZs. There are several reasons:1. In late 1970s, Hongkong and Taiwan needed to promote their industries to higher level. Some of their companies had to move out to less developed areas. This gave China a very good opportunity. Since all of us share the same culture and same language.2. Hongkong is a financial center in the world. There were a lot of business tycoons were looking for places to investment. Hongkong and Taiwan were good at export-oriented business too. Those businessmen or companies had a lot of orders from developed areas and they needed locations for production. Even today, more than half of the China's FDI actually come from Hongkong.3. China was a socialism economy. Central government controlled a lot of resources and could simply allocate those resources to the SEZs. Even FDI plays an important role in the development of SEZs, but domestic investment is still the most important.

When Chinese economy was getting bigger and bigger, western countries begun to invest or setup their business centers in China. Such as Wal-Mart, Motorola, Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Intel, Nortel, Actel, Siemens, Ford, Toyota, GM..., any top companies in the world you can name. These companies are designing, producing, ordering more and more products directly from mainland China. In fact, China is now a trading center for the world.

Today China can make products very cheap not solely because of the cheap labor. It largely because China has now the centers for parts and components for manufacturing. For example, Dongguan city in Guangdong Province is the center of the components or parts for all consuming electronics product, computer and communication equipment. By simply strolling around the city, a purchaser can easily accumulate at least 95 per cent of the installation parts required for a complete computer. (Source).

Now, India is trying to learn from China to repeat the same successful SEZ story in India. I am doubting India will succeed.

Can all of the above happen in India? I don't think so. India does not have developed areas like Hongkong and Taiwan for the investment sources. Even China is promoting industry level, but China is so huge and inequality exists in China. Companies simply move to other locations inside China. They don't bother to move out. It also takes India long time to build such kind of part and component centers to reduce the products' cost. India's economy is only 1/3 of that of China and its market is substantially smaller.

Can India count on the investment from US? Today, US companies' investments in India still cluster in call centers or software departments for coding, debugging and code maintenance. US's investment in China can only be listed as the 5th investor with total of around $3 billion investment. That's very little comparing with $60 billion FDI China has each year. (Source). When Wal-Mart can simply order products from Chinese companies at low cost, why it wants to invest in India?

Who Are the Fastest Growing Economies?

China is the fastest growing economy in the world. India is the second. I am pretty sure that many readers get this information very often.

Is this claim true? No!

This is the ranking for GDP growth rate for 2005 by countries . What do you get? Do you have a surprise? China's economic growth rate is listed as No. 17, tied with Kazakhstan at 9.1%, and India's growth rate is No. 34 at 6.2% (actually not very impressive, right?). Many other countries are developing faster than China, let alone India.

Generally, there are always some small countries' economy can grow extremely fast in some certain years. But for the country of the size of China or India, their economy can grow very fast, but it's difficult to be No. 1 or No. 2 in the world.

I post this since I found too many articles repeat China No. 1, India No. 2 stories. This claim is not accurate at least. Journalists should be responsible for their words and be as professional as possible.

India's Economical Growth Rate In The History. It is really a bad shape. Isn't it? But It's getting better in recent years(Source)

China Testing Three Kinds of Domestic AWACS

When Israel decided to cancel the contract for selling AWACS to China in late 1990s due to the political presure from US, China decided to develop our own AWACS system. China even declined the offer from Russia for its A50I AWACS.

In a short time, China has developed at least these three kinds of AWACS systems.

Friday, May 19, 2006

India's contribution to science dropping

The booming software and software service industry lure too many Indian talents. This unbalanced development will benefit India in a short time but will hurt India in a long run.

Also Indian gov and companies need urgently put more money in the R&D. Currently, only 0.77% of Indian GDP is invested in R&D (Total of only $4.9 billion)(Source). This lags behind many other developing countries, let alone the developed countries.

In 2005, China's government invested $29.4 billion in R&D (about 1.3% of GDP). This does not include R&D expenses at labs owned by foreign companies. (Source)

Even many Indian media and officials boast Indian innovative and knowledge economy, the number of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications filed by India declined three years in line, from 764 applications in 2003 to 723 in 2004 and 648 in 2005. (Source)

Karaikudi (TN), May 19: India's contribution to the world in the field of science is dropping rapidly and it is now just 0.5 per cent compared to 1.5 per cent in 2003, Prof C N R Rao, Chairman of the Scientific Advisory council to the Prime Minister, said here today.

India was far behind the US which contributed 50 per cent and China which accounted for 8.7 per cent, Rao said, delivering the First "Faraday Lecture" on "Science for our future: Personal reflections on five decades of Research", organised by the Central Electro chemical Research Institute.

India's contribution to high-quality research was one per cent two years ago, compared to 65 per cent from USA, and 25 per cent from Europe. Now it was just .5 per cent along with Brazil, said Rao, also President of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore.

Even China's contribution to high quality research was just .5 per cent two years ago. But they had caught up and they contribute two per cent. China's contribution to Physics had doubled, now it was almost equal to Japan, he said.

Even in the field of Nano Technology, in which India made some pioneering theoretical research when some people ridiculed the term "Nano", China's contribution was 50 per cent compared to one to five per cent from India.

Last year China contributed 500 research papers of which 140 were published by the Physical Science society, but India contributed only 90 papers though 60 were published, he said.

Rao regretted that the number of people taking science research was dwindling, as the field was not lucrative nor was there moral and spiritual support for the science community.

Bright people from the South, who were once interested in science, were going after Information Technology and helped foreign companies earn money. "People work for minimum degree to earn maximum money, this is not a healthy trend."

He was concerned that the 'IT industry virus', which destroyed the basic interest in science and diverted the student's interest towards materialistic things, was spreading to states like West Bengal and Orissa from where best science students were coming up.

Warning India would not have a future if she did not contribute more to science, he said several world science bodies were closely monitoring the neglect of science by India.

"Our candidates are not even nominated for best research papers awards by international bio-science forum. If our contribution is so low, how do we get into world science bodies?," Rao asked.

Rao said China had understood that only by doing more research in Pure science, they could make more inventions.

China is investing USD 500 million compared to India, which invested only Rs 30 crore. "We need to invest more. Even the best IIT in India is not comparable to the worst institute in Israel," he said.

"No investment in science means no new technology from India, and if the other companies like General Electrical are doing research in India, only America would be benefited. Saying no to science means saying no to the future of India," he said. (Agencies)

IMD's competitiveness ranking Scientific?

The Laussane, Switzerland-based International Institute of Management Development (IMD) has given a thumbs-up to China and India for their growing competitiveness. In IMD's World Competitiveness Yearbook rankings 2006 released on Wednesday, China and India have leapt up the rankings, China from 31 to 19 and India from 39 to 29.

From the same report, India also jumped 10 positions from No. 39 in 2004 to No. 29 in 2005.

China and India are such huge coutries, Increasing competitiveness in such large countries should always be a slow process. If China and India could make such a leap in this ranking in one year, I seriously doubt that if the ranking is scientific.

Huawei, A Large Chinese Tech Company

It is well known that China is a manufacturiung base for the world and provides cheap and quality products world wide.

Actually, China is marching up in the high technology industry with the massive R&D investment. The biggest successes come from the telecommunication equipement industry. Huawei, ZTE and FiberHome are becoming world-wide recoginized companies. There are also many other startups.

According to a research (Source), Huawei is the third largest in the telecom/datacom equipment market after Cisco and Nortel and it is still growing at fast pace. That's a big achivement for a Chinese company.

Huawei will be the second largest telecomm equipement maker in one or two years if the same trend continues.

Huawei is becoming a technology leader in some telecommunication fields already.

Another market report by telecom research house Infonetics Research.(Source) said that Huawei is:a leader in providing next generation telecommunications networks for carriers around the world, has been announced as the the global softswitch leader with a 26 per cent share of the VoIP (voice over internet protocol) softswitch market worldwide in 2005.

Recently, Huawei unveiled a super-large capacity Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) system with up to 1-Terabit switching capacity at IEC's Broadband World Forum Asia 2006 and this is the industry's first GPON access platform with Terabit non-blocking switching capability and fully redundant design as Huawei representatives said. (Source)

When deployed the GPON system, called SmartAX OFA5920, will allow users to have voice, data, and video services at a downlink rate of up to 2.5Gbit/sec. and an uplink rate of 1.25Gbit/sec. (Source)

Lai Changxing was arrested by Canadian Border Services Agency officers on Tuesday after a final review known as a pre-removal assessment concluded he would not be in danger if deported to China.

The Chinese government has accused Lai of heading a $10-billion US smuggling operation in the southeastern city of Xiamen and of corrupting local officials. Lai claims he was a successful businessman targeted after making political enemies.

This could be a big success for Chinese governemnet's efforts on crackdown the corruption that Chinese complain alot. Many Chinese believe that western countries, such as America, Cananda, are the paradise for the corrupted Chinese officials and businessmens simply due to the political reasons. Lai's deportation will be a serious deterrence to those economic criminals.

Three Gorges Dam Near Finish

After 13 years of contrusction since 1993, The Three Gorge Dam project will reach another important point: Completion of the dam on 05/20/2006, about 9 months ahead of the schedule.

The whole project will be finished in 2009.

Key facts about China's Three Gorges Dam* The project is located near what was the town of Sandouping in the central province of Hubei on the Yangtze, China's longest and mightiest river.* The dam is 185 metres (607 ft) in height and 2,309 m (7,575 ft) in length .* At full capacity, the dam will be capable of generating 22,400 megawatts of electricity from 32 powerful turbines generators, each with 700 MW capacity.* The dam and attached locks have consumed 27 million cubic metres (950 million cubic feet) of concrete. The total amount of metal used on the project is expected to reach 281,000 tonnes.* The reservoir created by the dam has inundated nearly 600 km (370 miles) of land, including two cities, 11 counties and 116 towns in Hubei and neighbouring Chongqing municipality. More than 1 million people have been relocated, 1,599 factories submerged.* The reservoir can store up to 39.3 billion cubic metres of water.* The static investment of the project was estimated at $10.8 billion in 1993, and dynamic investment is expected to reach $25 billion.* One of its main functions is to tame the Yangtze's floods, which have drowned countless thousands over the centuries.*The project was first suggested by Sun Yat-Sen in his book Strategy for State, Part II: Industrial Plans in 1918. Sun Yat-Sen is considered as the father of the nation of modern China and the founder of Nationalist Party (KMT). KMT fled to Taiwan after it was defeated by China Communist Party in civil war.* Environmentalists fear the project will cause severe pollution and silting by slowing the river's flow with waste from the remnants of abandoned factory sites, homes and hospitals.(For more information, please visit the website of Three Gorges Project Corporation (www.ctgpc.com);Chinadaily, a china's official newspaper, also published an article about the concerns of the project. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-05/15/content_589670.htm